Thais Breed Battlers : Fighting Fish Join War on Drug Abuse

Pitted in a foot-high vase of water, two Siamese fighting fish slowly circled, their fins flared, in an iridescent arabesque.

No longer than a finger, half body and half tail, the red fish darted at its purple-blue opponent, going for the head. Twisting and whirling, the two fish spun in the vase, then slowed and circled again, watching for an opening.

Twenty years ago, before they were outlawed, bouts like this were a Sunday obsession in the countryside, the Thai equivalent of the old-time Friday night prizefights at the Olympic.

The contestants, each resting in a water-filled Mekhong Whiskey bottle, were placed side by side on a table surrounded by 50 or more excited onlookers. As the fish saw each other and flared for action, the spectators figured the odds and bets were made. Then the fish were placed in a single container and the fight began.

Some Fought All Day

“Sometimes they would last for two hours, sometimes all day,” said Somnuek Sukto, a Bangkok chauffeur. “A lot of money changed hands. The biggest bet I ever saw was 6,000 baht ($230).”

The bout ended when one of the fish simply gave up the fight--sometimes in death. By then, the tails and fins of both fish inevitably were torn or tattered.

Now, some Thai breeders are trying to make the exotic fish a combatant in another fight--the struggle against drug abuse in Thailand’s cities. Encouraging poor families to take up breeding for profit, they hope to take young boys off the streets.

Hollywood once portrayed teen-agers staying straight by raising pigeons in the rooftop coops of New York tenements. Here, they gather discarded whiskey bottles, change the water and feed the fish.

For Sale in U.S.

In Bangkok’s Bang Kapi district, more than 100 families have begun breeding Betta splendens , the Siamese (now Thai) fighting fish, for sale in pet stores here and in the United States, Europe and Japan.

The Bang Kapi home of Niam Pueng-Iam has expanded to a series of open sheds, each containing racks of bottled fish and hatchery and breeding basins. A three-year-old son is learning to clean bottles and older members of the family do the more difficult jobs.

Each of the families is making $115 a month or more by raising fighting fish, a substantial return in Thailand where per capita annual income is an estimated $750.

Children can earn $2 a month cleaning bottles for the fish, which sell at wholesale for about 10 cents and retail here at 30 cents or more.

But it is not the money that is most important to Wanchai Rajrongmuang, whose Thai Fighting Fish Assn. is promoting household breeding operations as an alternative to life in the streets and drug abuse.

“You have to start fighting the drug problem from the time they are children,” Wanchai said. “If a family begins breeding fish, there is a job for everyone and the parents keep better track of the children. If one is in charge of feeding, he has to come home from school on time.”

Older family members have to arise before dawn to find the tiny worms on which the fish feed, a difficult job that binds younger family members by obligation to help out with the enterprise.

Working with children aged 5 to 16 at their own breeding operation, Wanchai and his wife Somtawin teach both the techniques of raising fighting fish and fighting drug abuse.

“We only ask that they take the profession seriously and collectively campaign against drug use,” explained Wanchai, a public health officer by profession.

Fish Lovers Married

His wife has raised fish for years, and when they met and married 12 years ago, their interests melded.

“It was love me, love my fish,” Somtawin said.

Last spring, she arranged a demonstration of the fighting fish project at an anti-drug display toured by Nancy Reagan on her visit to Bangkok.

Betta splendens is a spectacular species, a freshwater rival of its saltwater tropical cousins. They fall into two groups, what the Thais call rural fish and the Chinese long-tail, a product of specialized breeding. The rural fish, which can be caught in still waters in fields throughout the country, is short on tail but long on aggression.

“It was born to fight,” Wanchai said simply.

“When they fight, they try to bite each other’s mouth, hold on and twist,” said Somnuek, the chauffeur. “It’s beautiful.”

The long-tail is the export favorite, the fighting fish found in Southern California pet stores. Its small body is dwarfed by pectoral and dorsal fins and a full, swirling tail--the finest, Thais say, being in the shape of the leaf of the bo tree, the one under which the Lord Buddha is said to have received enlightenment. It’s a placid thought, but in action the fish is a dervish with tiny teeth.

Spectacular Colors

Basic colors are red, green, blue and purple, but breeding has introduced spectacular combinations--purple with a flash of green on the body, or red with touches of blue, white or yellow. They live for about 18 months in captivity, and need no fancy aquaria or oxygenation. Dad’s old whiskey bottle is fine.

City Thais favor the long-tails for their beauty. A popular home display for girls is four or five fish of different colors in champagne glasses. Princess Chulabhorn, the youngest daughter of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit, is said to have one of each color. But always, one to a container. Two fighting fish together is an invitation to battle.

The drawback is that the fighting fish tend to be lazy, lying at the bottom of their bottles, their fins held close to the body. Thais long ago came up with a solution: line up two or more bottles side by side, with sheets of paper between them. When this obstruction of their view of one another is removed, the show begins.

On seeing each other, the fish almost immediately begin to deploy their fins for the fight, pecking at the glass that separates them. And the hungrier they are, the more violent the action.

‘They’re Cute’

Lanida Patumsuwan, 12, a uniformed schoolgirl browsing in a fish shop in Bangkok’s Chatuchak Park, said she has four fighting fish. “They’re cute,” she said, and she never lets them “fight” through the glass, but she suspects her brother does when she is not looking. The boys in the family are tagged as inveterate paper-pullers.

Older Thais, with a Buddhist aversion to violence, tend to prefer them in the bottom of the bottle, or not at all, seeing their captivity as a form of torture.

But, said Wanchai, “children like to raise them because fighting fish react to each other. Goldfish just swim by.”

The export trade in fighting fish began about 20 years ago. Damrong Suppataraporn, manager of Noah Intercontinental Co., an exporter, estimates that 100,000 Siamese fighting fish are sent abroad each week.

The price, he said, has remained stable in comparison to price swings in the high-volume tropical fish trade.

$2 to $6 in L.A.

In Los Angeles area pet stores, the fish sell for about $2 each to as much as $6 for the rarer or more beautiful varieties.

Jeff Hewitt, manager of the reptile and amphibian department at Aquarium Stock Co. of Los Angeles, says he knows of no one who actually sets the fish to fighting but that there is great interest among collectors here, many of whom breed their own and vie to collect different varieties. He said there is even a local association of betta enthusiasts.

Thailand’s Commerce Ministry keeps no breakdown on fighting fish, but a spokesman said the value of freshwater pet fish exported in 1985 was more than $1 million.

In a city with few parks and a mushrooming population, the feisty little pla gud , as the Thais call them, may provide an outlet for a better life for thousands of children. So long as their fathers, those erstwhile gamblers on Sunday fish fights, keep producing Mekhong bottles.